Musee d'Orsay wins best of Paris and cruising on the Seine

It's official. The beautiful Musee d'Orsay wins best museum in Paris, at least in my estimation. We woke up late and stayed in for the morning, relaxing, writing and waiting for our favorite crepe place to open. It was a short 5 minute walk to said crepes, which were, for our third visit, not as good as usual. That's okay. Their version of not so good is better than most. Ready for our afternoon, we subwayed to the Musee d'Orsay, transferring from the 1 line to the 12. I'm getting to be pretty good with the Paris metro system. It helps that it's very intuitive.

So, Musee d'Orsay. I was there in 2013 with my mom and remember being exhausted, sitting on the benches that line the main sculpture hall. This is exactly where Alex and I landed when we arrived, and we stayed there, admiring our surroundings for a good half hour before setting out on an exploration. The museum resides in an old train station and the sight lines are still reminiscent of its past. The main room has massive high ceilings with skylights and ornate tiles. And a giant clock sits at the end of the hall. Alex initially said he didn't want to be there, not in a museum mood, but soon, he was engaged by the sculptures in the hall. We spent a good hour touring them and he took some incredible photographs (not pictured on this blog - stuck in his phone for now). At one point, he captured a man gettign all handsy with one of the marble sculptures, touching it on the butt. Alex's shot captured two women looking on at the man in horror. I mean, first, don't touch the sculptures (I want to every time I'm in a museum, soooo badly). But second, don't inappropriately touch them! It's a fantastic shot. In fact, many of his pictures showcase people reacting to the art, and mine avoided any people in the shots. He's got a great eye for photography.

After the sculpture galary, we went upstairs for some excellent touring of Impressionism and post Impressionism art. All the big hitters were showcased, including Gaugin, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Suraut, Pissarro and on. Alex sat out some of the galleries, ready to be done with it. But he was quite patient with me as I visited every single galary. We made a stop at the museum's cafe, where I had some of the best sorbet. It was Limoncello flavored. So good and refreshing. And then I headed upstairs on my own to complete my tour. There, I saw the inside view of the huge clocks that are the building's signature accents. From the outside, they gorgeous and from the inside, simply spectacular. In the gift shop (I've been so good at avoiding gift shops this entire trip, but I fell for it today), I picked up this beautiful and compact (important for Tuesday's plane ride) book about the museum. Also, I found a deck of playing cards featuring paintings on every card. Cool.

After finishing up and the amazing d'Orsay, we were conveniently located to hop aboard our dinner cruise, which left from the steps outside the museum. We had a prime table, right in front of the glass boat. Alex commented that it would suck if the ship sank, because there was no real way to get out or break the glass encasing us. So we hoped for no sinking as we ate our dinner. Speaking of dinner, it was yum. The vegetarian selection was excellent, not some weird combo of rice and veggies that are so often the go-to for non meat eaters. And Alex raved about his food too. One weird thing. This was a prepaid cruise. We were given a glass of wine with dinner. But if we wanted anything else to drink, including water, we had to pay for it. We couldn't even substitute the wine for water (opposite of the miracle) so I wound up paying 9 Euro for a bottle of Evian. Whatever. The sunset during the cruise was lovely and the Seine showed off its treasures. In the end, Alex and I both enjoyed the experience but agreed it probably wasn't worth the money spent on it. 

Subwaying home was complicated a bit by the closure of a park we intended to walk through to get to our stop. But while going around, we discovered, amists a strangely large amount of pedi-cabs, a different stop we hadn't used before. Easy peasy. We were home in 15 minutes, both tired and ready for sleep. This was one of our top days on the trip.